


rainbows in the night sky

by ideare



Category: Les Revenants | The Returned (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Character Study, Gen, Minor Violence, Prose Poem, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:04:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare
Summary: On her way home in the early hours of January 1st 2005, Julie is attacked in an underpass by a serial killer and cannibal. This is a look at her life throughout the year, from that moment on.[2005, a year in Julie's life.]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeaRoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/gifts).



> happy yuletide!

> before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed. - METEOROLOGY, Aristotle.

  
  


  
  
JANUARY. The sky that night is the clearest it’s been all week. The stars sparkle in the sparse spaces between the street lights. Fireworks explode just over the edge of “one”, and the world celebrates.  
  
Slick with blood, Julie’s hands stick to the leather of her outfit as she holds her stomach in. She’s dead before the ambulance reaches her. Only with persistence is she brought back, shoved into a body messy with fear.  
  
A little boy without a face stands in the corner of her hospital room. He fades away as the days stretch on, but he leaves that corner thrumming as red and raw as the scars on Julie’s belly.  
  
She doesn’t touch her abdomen for weeks.  
  
  
  


FEBRUARY. The whole town is drowned in reds and pinks as people go out of their ways to remember the people they love. Banners hang dangerously low over roads and tease the tops of cars. Bikers stop with one foot on the pavement and one foot off, to talk to each other about the minimal things they have in common, none of which is a helmet.  
  
Julie sits in Dr. Arnaud’s office, where the cinnamon incense stick burns persistently in the middle of the windowsill. He asks her to accept her miraculous resurrection. She denies him once, twice, three times, and he makes a note in a file that declares her unfit for duty.  
  
The bus isn’t empty, but no one sits next to her. And she’s grateful for it because that amount of love is suffocating. She would drown in all the townspeople's pitying stares if they weren’t avoiding eye contact.  
  
A card from Monsieur Costa taunts her from her kitchen table.  
  
  
  


MARCH. Adèle marries Thomas and has a baby right after. Even if the timing doesn’t match, people send their congratulatory messages to the pair. Someone insists on painting a four-leaved clover on the underside of the baby’s crib, for luck. They are met with no resistance. Other people chip in little charms and trinkets armed with the same spectrum of reasoning.  
  
Julie offers a tense smile and five seconds of eye contact for the happy couple. She forgoes presenting vouchers for krav maga classes until when the child is at least old enough to walk. She excuses herself not even five minutes into the celebrations, with half-formed apologies still heavy on her tongue.  
  
No one tries too hard to hide their relief.  
  
  
  


APRIL. The high is supposed to be 27°c with a low of 12°c. Clear skies are predicted, but it rains all day and not once do the street lights turn off. People rush from shelter to shelter. Makeshift umbrellas get ruined, and so do people’s nice spring outfits and hairstyles. Everyone is grumpy and keeps to themselves.  
  
Rain pelts her forehead and the top of her head in sharp splashes stinging against her face. Even when it’s warm, Julie is still cold; the raindrops are just the right temperature against her skin.  
  
Baggy jumper, dark blue. Oversized plaid shirt, charcoal grey and burgundy. Tight tank-top, black. Woollen tights, navy. Leggings, forest green. Jeans, dark denim. All of these waterlogged and dragging, pressing Julie down until she is walking in slow-motion.  
  
With her chin up and her path cleared, she feels like royalty,.  
  
  
  


MAY. Some kind of festival is going on, or maybe it’s tourist season, because there is an unusual amount of cars and people. Freshly mown grass releases chemicals that invite insects to come and spread their pollen around. The air is heady with the uncomfortable mixture of the smells of nature and the city.  
  
Julie uses hay fever as a one-for-all excuse to stay indoors whenever someone tentatively tries to draw her out. She keeps her windows closed tight, the little shutters on the vents flicked to fermé. She sleeps on her settee so that she has full view of all the entrances to her flat. ‘La Jeune Fille aux Cheveux Blancs’ is playing softly in the background to drown out the sound of silence.  
  
She sleeps sitting up, facing a blank television screen.  
  
  
  


JUNE. Even though it’s technically off limits, the lake is packed with townsfolk. The sun is barely up before people start trekking through the forest to set their gear up around the water’s edge. The lake's surface shimmers like shattered glass with all the movement of people and animals. Laughter tumbles across each other, yanking out sounds that almost sound sad as they roll across the distance.  
  
Julie sits in the centre of the commotion. She sits still, portrait ready with her chin up and her hands resting idly in her lap. Her swimsuit is dark, her sarong even darker, and her sunhat pulled low, obscuring most of her face. With her posture, she can pretend that she’s looking out on the world without actually seeing anything.  
  
A dirt clod sprays against her shoulder and trickles down onto her blanket. Giggles skitter around her, skimming off the brim of her hat.  
  
Unfazed, she keeps up the pretence of her vigil.  
  
  
  


JULY. Schools are officially out. Notebooks are stuffed away, never to be looked at again. Half-built plans and wishes drawn on graph paper are lost to time. Dreams are abandoned in favour of the temporary haven provided by the reality of summer. Puberty is sweated out. Awkward stages are packed away. Façades are polished for strangers to admire.  
  
Monsieur Lewanski gives Julie a glass of home-made lemonade that returning university students had hawked earlier in the afternoon. Julie and Monsieur Lewanski sit at his kitchen table, staring out at the scenery. They don’t waste energy speaking to each other. The ice in their glasses tinkle out a pleasant summer soundtrack.  
  
Late that night, Julie startles awake from a half-remembered dream to the realisation that this was her first day as a 26-year-old. She drifts back to sleep on her childhood hopes; she ends up gliding down her future goals to tuck herself away in the present.  
  
She shelters herself in the satisfaction that she’s made it this far.  
  
  
  


AUGUST. Sweat sticks to people, a second, shimmering skin ready to be sloughed off in the stream of showers. Car seats burn without the proper outerwear. Liquid left out for too long turns a nauseating lukewarm. Ice cubes melt into beverages before they can cool anything down.  
  
At first, Julie thinks that she’s too hot to be annoyed; the sun saps her of her energy. She is proven wrong when her bus bumps past Laure, laughing freely with a nurse that Julie doesn’t recognize. Anger ripples through her in a span of seconds, while searching for other emotions to draw out until it settles into disgust. Julie wants to warn this new lady not to get too attached to Laure or her enticing promises.  
  
Julie closes her eyes and detaches herself from the situation.  
  
  
  


SEPTEMBER. The weather is still unnaturally hot. No one knows how to dress: shirts untucked; hats and hairstyles out of regulation; students are reluctant to put on their jumpers or blazers; parents dress their children in long-sleeves, just in case.  
  
Even Julie only wears two layers.  
  
  
  


OCTOBER. Pumpkins guard houses and the entrances of flats and cemeteries. Dark shutters are pulled tight over windows, indicating a lack of participation in either tricks or treats. Leaves are pressed to mulch on damp pavements and in shallow, gritty puddles.  
  
Julie burns her Catwoman costume at the stroke of midnight on Halloween. Red and orange leaves curl away from the shrinking fabric. Damp twigs sputter, roll away from the fire and end up reluctantly steaming at the edge of the heap. A metallic tang from the dried blood on the tattered costume underlies the smell of smoke.  
  
The promises of tomorrow are Gaussian blurred.  
  
  
  


NOVEMBER. The temperature plunges dramatically. Colds and flu scatter across the town. People sneeze open-mouthed into the air around them, even with miles of scarves to act as a shield. Bacteria projectiles are dispersed into the atmosphere. No amount of orange juice or exercise can keep the general populace safe from at least a runny nose.  
  
There is something fascinating about watching people huddle together, packed tight into otherwise large spaces. Touching surfaces. Touching faces. Cups are rinsed and then reused, hygiene forgone for speed.  
  
Julie and her patients have been vaccinated for weeks.  
  
  
  


DECEMBER. Fireworks crackle in the air, even in the daylight. Loud bangs erupt sporadically at all hours of the day. Startled passers-by put on a half-hearted show of complaining. What’s the point when no one can even see it?  
  
Inside her flat, Julie sinks into her bathtub. Her head rests against the porcelain edge, so cool it’s almost warm against the nape of her neck. Headphones tilted to avoid dipping into the water. She blocks out the world.  
  
The sky that night is the clearest it’s been all week.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> naemi, thank you so much for the beta work.


End file.
